Brain activity scan

Diagnosing a newborn baby’s pain can prove baffling when infants broadly express discomfort or unhappiness through scrunched faces and wails. That could change with a new project that uses brain activity patterns to help figure out when babies experience pain. It’s an encouraging step toward helping clinical trials that test certain drugs or treatments as pain relief for babies. Parents and even physicians have been forced to interpret pain in young infants based on their behavior such as crying and facial grimacing. That’s not the most objective measure because babies often show similar behavior if they are hungry or want a cuddle, says Rebeccah Slater, associate professor of pediatric neuroimaging at the University of Oxford in the U.K. Instead, Slater and her colleagues turned to electroencephalography (EEG) technology as a way to identify and quantify brain activity patterns that reflect actual pain when babies experience certain medical procedures. Their efforts … [Read more...] about Brain Activity Detector Helps Study Pain Relief for Babies

DURHAM, N.C. - Boosting activity in brain areas related to thinking and problem-solving may also buffer against worsening anxiety, suggests a new study by Duke University researchers. Using non-invasive brain imaging, the researchers found that people at-risk for anxiety were less likely to develop the disorder if they had higher activity in a region of the brain responsible for complex mental operations. The results may be a step towards tailoring psychological therapies to the specific brain functioning of individual patients. "These findings help reinforce a strategy whereby individuals may be able to improve their emotional functioning -- their mood, their anxiety, their experience of depression -- not only by directly addressing those phenomena, but also by indirectly improving their general cognitive functioning," said Ahmad Hariri, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. The results are published Nov. 17 in the journal Cerebral Cortex. Previous findings from Hariri's … [Read more...] about Brain activity buffers against worsening anxiety

Researchers at the University of Calgary have created a new bionic hybrid neuro chip, able to to record the activity in animal brain cells for a period of weeks or months — at a much higher resolution than any similar chip that has come before.In doing so, it will help shed more light on how the brain functions, including the origins of neurological diseases and other conditions.“We hope that this technology will really be central to any implantable device directly in the brain,” Dr. Naweed Syed, scientific director of the University of Calgary, told Digital Trends.Syed and his fellow researchers have an impressive history when it comes to this field. Back in 2004, they were the first team in the world to develop a neuro chip that made it possible for two-way communication to occur between a brain cell and a computer chip or electronic device.That work was extremely significant but, as with any first-generation technology, it wasn’t … [Read more...] about Breakthrough neuro chip can record brain activity for months at a time

Some amazing things are possible using functional MRI (fMRI) technology, but until now it’s still resembled somewhat of a blunt instrument in some ways: able to spot trends in thought, but not quite quick enough to detect the kind of subtle neuronal activity that’s associated with higher order brain functions.That may be changing thanks to new rapid fMRI technology, capable of detecting brain oscillations around 10 times faster than previously possible. This is possible using the same MRI scanner, but by utilizing a new pulse sequence technique — a bit like an over-the-air software upgrade that doesn’t require any change in hardware.In a new study carried out at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, researchers applied this fast fMRI tech in an attempt to track brain activity during human thought for the first time.The results could help neuroscientists drill down far more accurately on brain activity, to … [Read more...] about Superfast fMRI is first to track human brain activity during thought

Life Sciences Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have shown for the first time that star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes--previously considered bit players by most neuroscientists—make noninvasive brain scans possible. Imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) have transformed neuorscience, providing colorful maps of brain activity in living subjects. The scans' reds, oranges, yellows and blues represent changes in blood flow and volume triggered by neural activity. But until the MIT study, reported in Science, no one knew exactly why this worked."Why blood flow is linked to neuronal activity has been a mystery," said study co-author Mriganka Sur, Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience and head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. "Previously, people have argued that the fMRI signal reports local field potentials or waves of incoming electrical activity, … [Read more...] about Astrocytes Shown to Play Role in Noninvasive Brain Scans

An issue that periodically makes its way into public discourse -- the impact and possible dangers to brain development and health posed by the ubiquitous use of cellphones -- is being revisited thanks to a newly published scientific study in The Journal of the American Medical Association.However, rather than offering any definitive answers, the new research, led by Nora D. Volkow of the National Institutes of Health, raises more questions. Volkow and colleagues found that 50 minutes of cellphone use was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism -- a marker of brain activity -- in the region closest to the phone antenna. What that means is unclear.The research team was not unaware of the health controversies surrounding cellular telephones, particularly concerns that exposure to the devices' radiofrequency-modulated electromagnetic fields could potentially have carcinogenic effects.Epidemiologic studies of the association between cellphone use and the prevalence of brain … [Read more...] about Your Brain on Cellphones: Effects Present, Consequences Unknown

Men and women have different reactions from the region of the brain that manages stress, heart rate and blood pressure when presented with certain stimuli.Researchers from the UCLA School of Nursing have discovered that cardiovascular diseases may manifest differently in the two sexes, which could lead to men and women being diagnosed and treated differently for the same disease.According to the study, the anterior insula part of the brain plays a greater role in cardiovascular regulation than posterior areas during a predominantly parasympathetic withdrawal challenge, with opposite lateralization between the two sexes.“In females, the left anterior-most gyrus responded distinctly from other regions than males,” the study states. “Those sex-specific structural and functional brain patterns may contribute over time to variations in cardiovascular disease between the sexes.”The researchers gave functional MRI scans to volunteers to measure brain activity by … [Read more...] about Men and Women’s Brains Act Differently During Cardiovascular Activity

Disease Research In the last decade, mounting evidence has linked seizure-like activity in the brain to some of the cognitive decline seen in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Patients with Alzheimer's disease have an increased risk of epilepsy and nearly half may experience subclinical epileptic activity -- disrupted electrical activity in the brain that doesn't result in a seizure but which can be measured by electroencephalogram (EEG) or other brain scan technology.In a recent feasibility study, clinician-scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) tested an anti-epileptic drug for its potential impact on the brain activity of patients with mild Alzheimer's disease. The team, led by Daniel Z. Press, MD, of the Berenson-Allen Center for Non-invasive Brain Stimulation at BIDMC, documented changes in patients' EEGs that suggest the drug could have a beneficial effect. The research was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease."In the field of Alzheimer's … [Read more...] about Anti-Epilepsy Drug Restores Normal Brain Activity in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease

Researchers have demonstrated how to decode what the human brain is seeing by using artificial intelligence to interpret fMRI scans from people watching videos, representing a sort of mind-reading technology.The advance could aid efforts to improve artificial intelligence and lead to new insights into brain function. Critical to the research is a type of algorithm called a convolutional neural network, which has been instrumental in enabling computers and smartphones to recognize faces and objects."That type of network has made an enormous impact in the field of computer vision in recent years," said Zhongming Liu, an assistant professor in Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Our technique uses the neural network to understand what you are seeing."Convolutional neural networks, a form of "deep-learning" algorithm, have been used to study how the brain processes static images and other visual stimuli. However, … [Read more...] about Researchers Demonstrate ‘Mind-Reading’ Brain-Decoding Tech

Reading a brain with a machine to get the information in it has been the stuff of sci-fi for years. Now, scientists at UC Berkeley's Gallant Lab have demonstrated that it's possible.The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reconstruct movies subjects watched by reading their brain activity.The process involved measuring brain activity in the part of the brain governing vision when the subject watched a selected set of movies. They developed computational models and correlating those models to signals measured in the subject's brain when watching a different set of movies.The process was long and involved, and it required plenty of work."To achieve reconstructions, we currently need a relatively large amount of computational resources and several hours of recordings for each subject," Shinji Nishimoto, the first author of the Gallant Lab paper and a post-doctoral candidate at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley, told TechNewsWorld.Gallant Lab … [Read more...] about SCIENCE Brain Scans Paint Picture of What the Mind’s Eye Sees